Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 09:10:11 -0600 From: Andrew Anderson Subject: Filler: Dying to write I apologize for my tardiness. I tried posting this earlier with no success. Bob Diss wrote: > > Okay, writer buffs (I'm back!), here's a little something to mull over. I'm > sure many of you have found writicular inspiration in death, so think about > this and share with us. > > If you have had a near dying experience, tell us about it. By this, I don't > mean anything mystical or out-of-body. I mean: has there ever been a time > in your life when you thought -no, you KNEW- that you were about to purchase > that proverbial farm? Maybe you were sick, or the realization flashed > during a car crash, or whatever. But the point is that you knew you were > about to die. . . How has it changed your writing? Have you written about > it? Have you even told anybody about it? > > I'm not talking about suicide here, that's a different animal. Or maybe I > am? Hell, it's a free country, so talk about anything that strikes your > metaphysical or metaphorical fancy. That's just not what inspired this. > > Yes, it's happened to me, and that will be coming out of my fingertips > shortly. (Preview: asthma, can't breathe) > > -bd > > (by the way, please forgive me if the line lengths are too long. I tried to > reset them on Eudora, but it doesn't appear to have changed anything. > Please email me privately if you can help.) Hello: I'm NEW, in so many ways. First, I'm new to this list "Hello". Second, I'm new to this world. I've just celebrated my first birthday. I survived a near fatal car crash a year ago November 6th. (Yes, that's 1995) and I'm just now feeling well enough to talk about it (or have "speaks" if you will). Over a year ago, I had dinner with my best friend of 16 years. I had stories to tell of a weekend at the San Franciso Book Fair. I flew from San Fransciso to Seattle to tell those stories. Later, I drove home along I-5 from Seattle to Portland: a winters evenings full of conversation in my head. I hit that guard rail, sober, going backwards at 45 mph. The road was wet. I don't remember anything else... The following story is what I preceived to be happening following my accident. The 37 days in ICU at OHSU were terrifying. I lost one kidney, my spleen, a third of my small intestine and half of my colon. I'm still recovering today from injuries to my legs and right hand. I nearly died TWICE. I'm grateful and thankful to be able to walk and talk: no brain damage. I will be able to return to work for a local publisher here in Portland, OR soon. There are so many stories. This is just the beginnig... I know now that I live for many things... I live to see the sun on my flower patch and the total submission of my kitties to my hand and the love of my friends and family and my unending desire to write. Here's my first attempt at nonfiction. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks, a girl named Andie (Andrea) The Escape This should have been recorded as the best weekend of my life. I spent it with my brother Rob and his fiancee in San Francisco. I recall the afternoon sunlight on my face and the chilly November breeze in my ears on the ferry from Sausalito. Next, I flew to Seattle to have dinner with old friends. I recollect their smiling faces over steaming cups of coffee. My face was tired from laughing. I couldn t wait to get home. I had stories to tell, but first the three hour drive to Portland. As I pulled out into the wet, dark Seattle night, I thought I had my life figured out. I was lucky, oh so lucky. Lucky was not exactly the word to describe how I felt in the following weeks. I remember waking up. My tongue was swollen and rolled up deep in my throat, my sweaty head stuck to the pillow. I couldn t feel my arms or feet. I was so thirsty I couldn t make enough spit to swallow. My guts felt like barbecue coals. There was a frat party out on the deck. Drinking margaritas and mai-tais, strangers were kicking back by the pool. Every so often, someone would peer in and laugh at me. I was a trapped party favor. I really needed a martini. No one would dare bring me a drink. No one would think it funny if I asked for one. The words of Mr. Heller, my eighth grade teacher, came to me, "The world is not fair. Don t fool yourself into thinking it is. You ll be extremely disappointed." The urge to laugh welled up in my throat, then passed in a gurgle. I didn t have time for this frat party, it was all a mistake. I had very important things to do, absolutely no time to play, NONE. I wasn t taken seriously, I wanted to scream. I remember Gail in her black, backless dress, drinking champagne. She slid me in on my naked ass over the cold floor and tied me up under a sheet. I was covered in a fine dust and was shaking from the cold. The room was full of giggling unseen strangers. Roughly hewn hand puppets leered out at me - horses, pigs and cows. Someone kept sticking me with a tree branch. When I freed myself, everyone of them would be in an eternity of trouble. As a child, I remembered throwing the school bully across the girls bathroom for messing with my best friend. She landed on her ass under the paper towel rack, she couldn t sit down for weeks. And THAT was what was going to happen here as soon as I was free. It was 1975 again. I was in the middle of a Brady Bunch show gone amuck. Trapped in a room decorated in pastel orange, purple and teal curtains - didn t these people have any taste? What would Marsha Brady do? The answer seemed hopelessly simple, she would start crying; someone would rescue her. I clinched my teeth. Well, absolutely nobody was going to make me cry. And who had the guts to rescue me? Then Gloria swung through the room like the bionic woman, sparks flying from her fingers, tiny bombs and automatic weapons going off in the background. She grabbed me around the middle and we swung out of the room and onto the balcony. Together we perched on a tall skyscraper, cold wind whipping my naked flesh. We had to jump. Hundreds of floors later, we landed in a boat on a waveless lake. I felt safe for a moment. She hugged me her heart beating frantically. A moment later, we were overcome by a group of drug dealers on jet skis. I tried to resist, but I had no arms. Gloria disappeared. I was tied to a couch in dark, tight quarters of a submarine. I could hear the sputtering and bubbling of the engines beneath me. I couldn t move or speak. If only I could click my heels, I knew I was capable of magic like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. If only I could untie these restraints with my teeth, I knew I could escape. My car was parked at the end of the pier. I would drive with my feet. The dealers left me alone with a video game. I watched the screen endlessly, I would not sleep until I had this game figured out. A simple game really - the orange dots flowed across the screen in a rhythmic sequence. I counted the seconds between their coming and going, the docking and embarking of the submarine, the arriving and departing of the dealers. Now to get myself untied. I needed a Houdini maneuver. Focusing on the knots was tedious, my vision was blurred. What the hell was wrong with my eyes? I tried to focus. I tried to concentrate. Then he came in, dressed from collar to heel in navy blue. He was a young John Lennon. His loveless, blue eyes leered out at me from behind small, round spectacles. He hissed, "You ve been chosen for an exciting experiment. You need just a little of this." As the needle entered my arm, I saw myself as a hollow-eyed heroin addict. I can fight this addiction I thought. I prepared myself for immunity. I was not going to be the next Patty Hearst. I would not be brainwashed. As I lapsed into sleep and his face blurred, I thought, I better smile. I m not going to let this bastard think he s got me. When I woke up later, I knew why I was detained. Under the intense heat of fluorescent lights, organs were removed from my body. Without anesthesia and without looking, a man tore out handfuls of guts and what I imagined was a kidney. On all fours, his assistant jumped up and down on my chest yelling, "This really doesn t hurt does it?" Someone was taking pictures. I was told that I was a medical miracle. People would soon be staring at my guts in amazement. Then I slept for minutes or was it days? I was shaken by a sudden rush of adrenaline. Like the six million dollar man, David entered gripping an AK-47. He threw bombs into the submarine corridor then knelt to untie me. In a whispery voice he said, "Your grandpa is here to see you." I could see my grandpa s callused left hand with the silver watch band flashing in the light of the corridor. I could smell his Aqua Velva. I could hear him say in a terribly disgusted voice, "This is bullshit, bullshit." I was so relieved. I could feel his determination flow over me. I was very close to escaping. David finished untying me but I couldn t stand. I had no arms to hold on to him. I wished he d just drag me by the hair, it couldn t possibly hurt much. Reading my mind, he tangled his hands in my hair. Suddenly, we were inundated by state troopers. They thought we were drug dealers. David s hands went slack and he said, "I m sorry sweety." He disappeared. I was left alone with the rush of the submarine engine in my ears. The smell of my grandfather s after shave evaporated. I remembered he had died a year earlier. Overtime I discovered my arms, I located my feet, teeth, lips and cheek bones. Somehow I knew I had mashed potatoes for guts, so I didn t look. Very slowly I recognized Shelly s voice. She said, "Oh, Andrea, Andrea" in sympathetic tones. She was my secret weapon. Where did she come from? I felt as if I had known her forever. Every time I woke up her amazing face was swimming above me smiling, frowning and laughing with me, not at me. She brought me ice cubes and cold water. The Brady Bunch curtains were closed and no one was allowed in unannounced. The bubbling and gurgling of the submarine disappeared as I was taken off the catheters and the drain tubes. The trach was removed from by throat, so I was no longer mute. I had successfully won the video game, so the monitor with the flashing orange dots was rolled away. The laughing people by the pool were replaced by the crew at the nurse s station. The dealers and troopers became life-giving doctors. I felt like Dorothy waking up after the tornado. Shelly, Gloria, David and John Lennon formally introduced themselves as nurses. It was 1995 again. I was untied. I was removed from continuous dialysis. I still had one kidney and it started working again. I still had half of my intestines. I was safe. I would live. I would walk. After thirty-seven days, I escaped ICU. Maybe I didn t have everything in life figured out. But then again I had a life and I knew one thing, I was lucky, oh so lucky.